


After the Fire

by doxydejour



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-23
Updated: 2015-04-23
Packaged: 2018-03-25 10:35:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3807163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doxydejour/pseuds/doxydejour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was the worst question you could ever ask of anyone - because it was a question that was only asked when you already knew what the answer would be, and that made any kind of lying impossible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Originally uploaded on my tumblr @riffraffatlaw as "Not Okay". I've corrected some of the grammar here. :U
> 
> Written for the 60's show, but I guess it could also work in the TAG reboot.

_It’s going to be okay, isn’t it?_

It was the worst question you could ever ask of anyone.

_Mister? Hey, mister? It’s going to be okay, isn’t it?_

Because it was a question that was only asked when you already knew what the answer would be, and that made any kind of lying impossible. Even if you were the best liar in the world, so well-versed in the art that you could bend the reality of those around you to your will, you couldn’t stare truth this hard in the face and change it all around to match what you wanted it to be.

Everyone else was in bed. Even the patriarch of the family. Contrary to Gordon’s tongue-in-cheek ‘jokes’, Jeff Tracy slept just as much as his sons did: which was to say sometimes not at all, and sometimes a great deal.

Tonight was a good night. They had completed a successful rescue and returned just in time for dinner - after a good shower of course, because soot from a fire stains your skin just as badly as your clothes and sometimes the only way to get the smell out is to stand in the scalding water until you feel faint. There have been occasions in the past where Scott has been tempted to just let the blackness take him; in the sizeable ensuite there wasn’t anything near the shower to bang your head on, and going down like a bundle of matchsticks was preferable to muscle pain and exhaustion.

But he hadn’t. He’d showered and put on some nice clothes for dinner, because playing happy families was sometimes the only thing that could keep him sane. And he sat with his brothers and his father and laughed at some trivial matter Tin Tin had scared up from the gossip paper she took in and tried to feel like his insides hadn’t turned to lead and his eyes weren’t fuzzy from holding back the recriminations and the shouting. He watched Virgil flick an unnoticed pea into Alan’s hair with a fixed smile plastered to his face, and tried to ignore the anger welling like a bolt of searing heat in his stomach.

It was easy for them.

They hadn’t seen the kid.

They hadn’t had to _lie_.

And worse, they hadn’t _failed at it_.

Then Alan had to kick off. He meant well, of course he did. Alan wouldn’t hurt a fly. But he also never thought about what he said - he assumed if something felt a certain way to _him_ then it would to everyone, and it was an easy enough mistake to make except when words crafted for humour ended up hurting those they were aimed at. And tonight, it seemed, they were aimed at him.

“You know, sometimes I wonder why you come along on some missions.”

Scott drifted out of his revere and glanced up at his brother. “And why would that be, Alan?”

“Don’t act like I didn’t see you. Virgil and I were in that building, clearing out all the civilians and ducking the ceilings as they came down, and there you were sat outside at Mobile Control chatting away to the fire officer. You might as well have just stayed at base.”

Ah, so he was in one of those moods. Prickly. Alan was the baby, it was true, but that didn’t mean he had to act like one so damn often.

“I was coordinating the operation,” Scott replied. He tried to keep his tone light but was aware of the slight ragged edge that tacked itself on to each word. “Which is how you knew to get out of there before the floor gave way, I might add.”

Alan sniffed. “Yes, but we’re the ones who did the actual rescuing. Then you come back to base and act as exhausted as the rest of us. Poor Scott. Dragging that desk out of Thunderbird One must have been so tiring.”

“That’s enough.” Jeff’s words were sharp. “Alan, you know very well how important coordination is on a rescue mission. And Scott has done his fair share of the manual side of things over the years. I seem to recall just last month he volunteered to fly an almost certainly sabotaged Fireflash and didn’t make as much hoo-ha about it as you are a standard fire rescue.”

Alan opened his mouth to argue and was neatly cut off by Virgil. “It doesn’t make much difference who did what; we got everyone out. Another one hundred per cent successful mission. Somebody will have to update the scoreboard in the games room.”

Jeff made a disapproving grunt. He was fine with the boys being flippant - people coped with pressure in different ways - but the little black chalkboard hung up above the pool table seemed too reckless a step.

Scott didn’t say anything for the rest of the meal.

He was too busy remembering.

_Yes, he’d been at Mobile Control the whole time the apartment block burned. There may have been a fire chief there - he’d certainly spoken to someone at some point - but most of his attention had been fixed on monitoring the building’s structural integrity. So much so that he hadn’t noticed the kid at first. She’d been a vague blur in his peripheral vision, appearing in an instant and standing still enough to become a fixture he didn’t register. It was only when she spoke that he glanced at her, and even then only out of courtesy. His brothers had been wading into a fiery inferno. His concerns were with them._

_“Hey, mister. Are you with International Rescue?” She asked after a pause._

_“Sure, kid.” He’d replied._

_A beat._

_“That was my home.”_

_“Sorry to hear that.”_

_He’d looked at her again. She was twelve, maybe, wearing comic-book hero pyjamas and dragging a large plush rabbit on the blackened ground. “Where are your parents?”_

_“With the ambulance people. Dad hit his head real badly.” She looked at his console. “I wanted to talk to you.”_

_His attention slid back to the dials. “Sorry, kid, but I’m in the middle of something. We’re trying to get everybody else out safely.”_

_She brightened. “Oh, good. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”_

_His ears had pricked at her tone. “Yeah? There somebody in there you need to let me know about?”_

_She held up her hands excitedly, dropping her rabbit into the dried mud. “Yes! Nobody else would listen to me. It’s about Martha. Please, mister, you’ve gotta help!”_

_And then he’d paid attention._

He waited until everyone else had gone to bed before making the call. John kept weird times, even when he was home on Earth - which wasn’t often these days. Alan had developed a knack of worming out of satellite duty to spend more time with Tin Tin, and after the first few disappointments the elder brother had thrown up his hands and said that he much preferred space anyway. Scott hadn’t been sure it was healthy, spending so much time alone (and in artificial gravity to boot), but after a few late night calls he’d come to realise that John was probably the best adjusted out of all of them.

It was eleven p.m. on the island, but when John answered he was dressed in soaking gym clothes. “Scott!” He panted. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Scott managed his first smile of the evening. “Remind me again what sort of guy goes for a run in the middle of the night?”

“A guy who hasn’t seen a real track in three months.” John folded his arms. “Please tell me that my sacrifice isn’t in vain and Alan is at least buying her flowers.”

Scott clucked. “I never was a very good liar.”

John sighed. “I’ll ask dad for a raise. Anyway, what’s up?”

Scott hesitated, wondering how to phrase his next question. “Do you…do you remember Tom?”

John frowned. “That’s a pretty common name. I’m sure there were at least five of them at sch-”

“No, no.” Scott interrupted. “ _Tom_. Gordon’s Tom.”

John’s face cleared. “Ah,” he said. “Yeah. I remember Tom. More specifically, what he did to my books.”

“And Grandma’s Pyrex dish.”

“I didn’t actually think it was possible to break one of those things.” John smiled. “So, why are you asking about Tom after all these years?”

Scott rubbed absently at his temple. “Do you remember what happened to him?”

John’s smile vanished. His face clouded over. “Sure I do. I think even Alan would remember, although he was quite young…”

“Seven,” Scott said absently. “Gordon was eight. Tom was nine. He kept repeating that terrible joke all the time - you know - ‘why is six scared of seven?’.”

“Because seven ate nine.” John replied, almost automatically. They’d both heard the answer so many times.

The room fell silent. When Scott looked up, he found John studying him over several thousand miles of empty air. “So?” He asked eventually. “What’s the angle?”

Scott grabbed a pen from his father’s desk and began to tap it irritably against his knee.

“I could never figure out why,” he said eventually. “Neither could dad. It drove him just about crazy. I remember he grabbed Gordon once and just started shouting at him, demanding to know why he did it. Poor kid was so scared he hid under my bed for the rest of the day and wouldn’t come down.”

John hummed. “Those were some bad times for everyone,” he said vaguely. “But…I’m surprised you never figured it out.”

The pen stopped tapping. “Wait…you mean you know?”

“Well…” It was John’s turn to hesitate. “I never really talked it through with him. He didn’t mention it much after dad got the therapist involved. But I _thought_ I had a pretty good handle on it.”

“So…why?”

“Well, we…we just lost our mom, Scott. And whilst me and you and maybe Virgil were old enough to get our heads around that, Gordon wasn’t. He was a kid in every sense of the word, although he grew up pretty fast after that year. I saw the look on his face at the funeral. He looked _lost_ more than anything. Like he knew he was supposed to understand what was going on, but he just…didn’t.” John shrugged. “It was okay for Alan. He was too young. But Gordon was too old to plead ignorance and too young to fully grasp what was happening. So, he…used Tom to try to understand.”

Scott ran this analysis through his mind with an escalating sense of dread, and found himself agreeing with it. “You’re saying Gordon killed off his imaginary friend in order to cope better with mom’s death.” He said bluntly.

“I’m not a psychiatrist,” John pointed out. “But that’s how it seemed to me.”

Scott’s heart sank like a stone, clunking heavily against the knotted pit his stomach had become.

_Nobody else would listen to me._

_It’s about Martha._

“Scott,” John said quietly. “Are you okay?”

That question. That damned question.

_Where are your parents?_

_They’re with the ambulance people._

_Dad hit his head real badly._

_“Mister. Give it to me straight. Is Martha going to be okay?”_

_“Of course she is. She’s out of the building already - look, I can see her running across to you now.”_

_That pitying look. The tears. “No she isn’t. You’re not listening to me either! She’s not okay! She could be dead!”_

_Then the mother had appeared, eyes and throat choked with dust and tears, and dragged the girl off without a backwards glance. She had screamed the entire time. He could still hear her now. He wondered if she had ever stopped._

“Sure,” said Scott, after only the briefest of pauses. “Sure, I’m okay. I’m just tired is all.”

“Best get some sleep, then.” John made a show of looking down at himself disapprovingly. “You’re keeping me from my shower, you know. If we get a call now I’m not reporting to dad in this state.”

It wasn’t much of an effort to cheer him up, but Scott grinned all the same. “Finally,” he said, “the golden boy gets called out! It’s almost worth phoning in something myself.”

John glared at him. “Don’t even try it. You’re worse at pretend voices than Gordon. It’s almost painful to listen to you.”

“Almost,” Scott echoed. “Night, John. Thanks for the chat.”

He didn’t sleep. He went for a run.

The newspaper headlines of the next morning were triumphant. Rampant fire in densely populated apartment building defeated by International Rescue. Everyone saved.

Small byline at the bottom of the article on page seven.

One casualty. Survived by wife and daughter.

Cause of death: head trauma.


End file.
